Plight of the Bumblebee

Today's cartoon is an interesting one to me. I know over the years, Disney's been bound to trash several ideas over the years, like Fantasia sequels during Walt's life time. Before I found this one, I never thought that they would toss out a Mickey Mouse cartoon. (Kind of ironic, when you think about it.) The weirdest part of it is that the animation is 95% complete. A few years ago someone on YouTube found a pencil test of said cartoon and news of the short spread across animation forums like the influenza.

Anyway, it's called Plight of the Bumblebee and was originally directed by Jack Kinney, hands down the best shorts director at Disney.(He mostly handled the Goofy series as well as two Donald Duck cartoons I know of like my favorite one, Duck Pimples.) The story is that Mickey finds a bee named Hector singing bebop (get it?) but sporadically hits an operatic note. Mickey offers to be Hector's manager and he signs Hector a contract. However, he finds out that the insect has a weakness for flowers because whenever he drinks from one, he instantly gets drunk. (I admit, that idea is pretty funny.) So Mickey finds a way around it and Hector becomes a successful singer with his help.

What do I think of it? Well, I think it's very entertaining and would have loved to see it finished. Coming from Kinney's crew, it's top notch over most of the shorts at the time and is far better than anything Mickey appeared in after Mickey and the Beanstalk. There's wonderful, lively animation by John Sibley and Fred Moore (he designed the current Mickey look and I'm sure got dibs on animating in every one of his 40's and 50's shorts. )  Sibley called it the best Mickey short ever and claimed it was shelved because he and Moore looked it over and felt it had an awkward length to it. Kind of an odd way to go really...

Who knows? My hope is that maybe John Lassenter or someone at Disney sees this and gets the idea to try and make this short see the light at last. I can see it happen.

With his talent and my brains, we'll hit the TOPS!!

I posted the cartoon's pencil test on my Facebook account and so far haven't gotten any guff from it. Enjoy!

  

Tiger Trouble

The best of the Goofy cartoons. Period.

Like a lot of Jack Kinney's cartoons, this one has a Warner Bros feel to it. The music's very jazzy, the animation is close if not a little better, and the gags are hilarious!

Speaking of animation, Milt Kahl did this short, too! He did most of the animation on the tiger here. His animation of the big cat wrestling with Goofy is priceless! It's very fluid, solid, and very funny. Just the things that animation is all about!

Here's some sketches by Bill Beet, too.

Goofy - Tiger Trouble (1945)
Uploaded by Cartoonzof2006

Duck Pimples

Man! It's been a long time since I posted here, and for that I apologize. I've been busy with stuff and I just couldn't post.

Anyway, I think I'll start this entry with another golden cartoon.

First off, lots of you probably bet I just watch Warner Bros. cartoons, but I also take a look at some great MGM, Walter Lantz, and even Walt Disney cartoons. For today, I'll focus on Disney.

Now, ol' uncle Walt didn't make a whole lot of memorable shorts, but there are still some great ones out there that Walt produced. One of those jems I'm featuring today is a Donald Duck short called "Duck Pimples" by Jack Kinney. Kinney was one of the best directors Disney ever hired. He normally worked on Goofy shorts, but also gave Donald a try. This one is particulary memorable (for me, at least) because of the very abstract backgrounds, hilarious characters, and the style of humor here is more Warner Bros-esque than what you would normally expect from Disney.

Just watch yourself and find out!


I'll try to post another cartoon tomorrow or some of my own drawings. "Till then, ta-ta! :)